(Between 8:27 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Ong Gives Flight 11 Details; Seating Accounts Differ

Nydia Gonzalez, an American Airlines supervisor at its Southeastern Reservations Office, is relaying information to Craig Marquis, a manager at the American Airlines System Operations Control (SOC) in Fort Worth (see (8:21 a.m.) September 11, 2001). According to Marquis, “She said two flight attendants had been stabbed, one was on oxygen. A passenger had his throat slashed and looked dead and they had gotten into the cockpit.” Marquis later recollects that Ong said the four hijackers had come from first-class seats: 2A, 2B, 9A, and 9B. She’d said the wounded passenger was in seat 10B. [Wall Street Journal, 10/15/2001; Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] Note that this conflicts with the seats flight attendant Amy Sweeney gave for the hijackers at about the same time: 9D, 9G, and 10B (see (Before 8:26 a.m.) September 11, 2001). At around 8:30 a.m., this information is passed to Gerard Arpey, the effective head of American Airlines this morning (see (8:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 12 ] By 9:59 a.m., counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke and other top officials receive the information. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 13-14]